


FoxHound

by Venstar



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Angst, M/M, a take on the fox and the hound
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-16
Updated: 2017-07-16
Packaged: 2018-12-03 00:20:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11520579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Venstar/pseuds/Venstar
Summary: We'll always be friends...forever.





	FoxHound

**Author's Note:**

> as always, i get inspired by some odd piece of pop culture. this time, it was the fox and the hound. you may recognize some lines, etc.

Friends they were and friends they had been, or so he thought. His time working with James had brought an understanding, a closeness of brothers in arms. Enough to meet for a pint, wave as they passed each other in the cavernous halls of MI6, hang out in Q-branch after a successful mission or unsuccessful mission, that saw them huddled on the floor of Q’s office. Sometimes those office floor sessions were held in somber silence, others, noisy laughter as they tried to flick cards into a bucket. Q had wondered what it was that drew the two of them together in such companionable productivity. Bond would bring a magazine or catch up on his enormous backlog of paperwork, as Q tinkered and fiddled with prototypes at his desk. They’d chat back and forth. Nothing major and nothing minor.

One night, after a very, very, very bad mission. Q had assisted James to his flat. Bond was half out of his mind from pain medication, the associated pain from his injuries and loss of another asset during a mission that had gone tits up. Q settled James on the couch, while he piled a bunch of blankets on the floor, so he could sleep and watch over his friend. He had come back from the bathroom to find James gone from the couch and sitting in the pile of blankets, giggling, completely loopy from the meds.

Q had joined him, at James’s insistence, the friendly, warm tugging of a rough palm to a younger, yet equally rough palm. The hands of men who worked for a living. One by killing, the other by inventing devices to kill. Q recalled the odd conversation that followed, full of childish promises, that had James been in his right mind, would never have happened. They whispered to each other that night, pillows and blanket forts surrounding them.

“You're my very best friend.” James said, waving around one of Q’s penlights, until he placed it under his chin.

“And you're mine too, James.” Q said, placing his spare penlight under his face. They both grinned at their ghoulish expressions.

“And we'll always be friends forever, won't we” James asked, he flopped back onto a pillow, his flashlight aimed at the ceiling of their blanket fort, his eyes growing heavy. Q wondered how long it would take before the dose fit for an elephant would take him down.

“Yeah, forever.” Q agreed before shifting to lie down with him.

“And always.” James said, he turned towards Q, and Q couldn’t be sure if it was a combination of drugs or adrenaline crashing, but something passed over James’s face and then he was kissing Q, not as a friend. It was stolen, quick and sloppy, followed by a mumbled, “I love you,” against Q’s cheek.

Q froze in surprise, not sure how to respond, especially now that James had completely zonked out, his penlight loose in his grip. He hesitated before brushing a light kiss over James’s lips.

“I love you too.” The words hung soft and heavy under their canopy. When had that happened? Friend to brother to lover? Had they moved to that place already? When did that happen? Q’s mind churned and tried to process the data, from start to the present, but nothing stood out.

Morning found them tangled in a painful knot of sheets and run down penlights. Q couldn’t stop from laughing, as James moaned and groaned and grumbled about a double oh’s dignity and something about how blanket forts didn’t fit in with that.

“Where on earth, even are you?” James asked, pawing clumsily at the blankets. “I can hear you, but I can’t see you.”

“I’m enjoying the atmosphere.” Q said, a bit breathless from laughing. He felt strong arms pull at him. A slightly ruddy, banged up face with blanket wrinkles pressed into it and a black eye, peeked over the top of the blankets swaddling him.

“Oh there you are.” James said, he smiled, his grin pulling on his swollen cheek. “I thought I’d lost you.”

“Ha. I believe I’m one piece of equipment that you can’t lose, and HAVE to bring back in one piece.” Q laughed at his own joke. It felt good, to be laughing after such a nightmare of a mission.

“Hmmm, so you are.”

“Mmmph!” Q’s surprise was caught against James mouth, as it surprised him once again and for the life of him, Q couldn't understand two things. One, why he was personifying James’s mouth and two, why James was kissing him...breathless..oh oh oh OXYGEN! Q gasped around the kiss and James pulled back only enough for him to breathe.

“I thought I dreamed that.” James murmured, his nose brushing Q’s.

“Um. James?” Q asked, trying so hard not to chase those lips, he had no idea what his ‘friend’ had meant. “Are you...is everything alright?” He chose his words as carefully as he could. “Is this your medication? Do we need to call medical?” There was absolutely no way that Q was going to take the wrong impression from a drugged up friend.

“No.” James said. One word, one word and he was rolling over, pulling Q along with him. “Ow.”

“Idiot.” Q murmured into James’s neck as he was pulled close to an oh so lovely, hard and warm body. A rolling laugh filled Q’s exposed ear.

“Always.”

It wasn’t always that way, it wasn’t always that good. Friends, brothers, lovers. A trifecta that supported each other, until you looked at each individual and there was something about James that had broken, in MI6. Too many missions where he’d come back, burnt to hell, broken to bits and was dusted off in a week, expected to do it all over again. Q could fix a broken machine, but he couldn’t fix a human.

In between, they had quiet moments, where they explored each other and the city. They had loud moments where arguments and furniture smashed, splitting their relationship. Arguing with James was never fun, they could easily tear each other apart with either words or fists. James had learned the hard way, that the Quartermaster was well trained in areas beyond IT. They had both come away, bloody, scratched and bruised. The make up sex was spectacular, but not something Q wanted to repeat due to an argument like that again. Bruises on top of bruises.

“Two weeks! You were MIA for two weeks, presumed dead, I found your obituary in Mallory’s computer. In fact, I’ve found several of them. Why do you do that!?” Q yelled, anxiety churning in his gut.

“Why do I do anything?” James asked, sneering at Q. “For Queen and Country.”

“I don’t see the Queen telling you to get shit-faced and fucked for two weeks straight while the whole of MI6 is looking for you!” Q hissed, his voice slashing across the kitchen into the living room, where James sat sullenly on his battered leather couch flipping through the channels on the television, his arm in a sling and a sunburn across his weathered face.

“Shame, really. She should.”

“You arse! You...you...meathead! You absolute menace of a meathead!” Q yelled, he slammed his mug down on the kitchen counter. “If you want vacation time, file for it like the rest of the god damned universe and personnel at MI6. Stop dicking around with…” Q’s voice failed him.

James heard the fail and like a hawk, jumped on it and tore it apart. “With what? Dicks that aren’t yours? Women that aren’t you? I’m sorry, did we have a deal, if we did, I thought it was not to get in each other’s way.”

Q hung his head down. “Fuck you, James.”

“I thought you did.”

Q laughed, he couldn’t help it. James didn’t remember that night, those few words shared between them in a heavily medicated, warm blanket fort. Fuck. Friends, brothers, lovers. No love. Q sighed and put the mug in the sink, rinsed it and walked to James’s front door.

“Q?” James called from the living room.

Q glanced over his shoulder.

“The lock’s a bit sticky. Make sure it latches, yeah.” James said, his eyes still on the flickering screen.

“Sure. No problem.” Q slammed the door on his way out, not caring if it latched or not. “Dammit.” He did care. No sense in a stupid spat to put the life of someone he cared for on the line. He stomped back and jiggled the handle, making sure it clicked into place. “Jackass.”

 

\-----

Q watched as Bond stalked away from him, his body tense from the instructions he had received. It was going to be a long, hard mission and Q was worried, Bond's humanity was beginning to fray.

He whispered to himself. “We met it seems, such a short time ago. You looked at me, needing me so. Yet from your sadness, our happiness grew. Then I found out, I need you, too. And now I find, we're both alone.”

Moneypenny found him, sitting at a workstation, staring angrily at his monitor, fiddling with some sort of prototype that looked like it might snap on his fingers and inject something if he wasn’t careful.

“Q, you need a reality check.” Moneypenny said, she sat on the edge of his desk and tapped him on the head with her pen.

“I do not.” Q waved her pen away. “That's not one of the exploding ones is it?”

“No. Q, you've handled 007 for a long time now, from when you were just a fledgling minion yourself and as the Quartermaster. You have to know that Bond is going to come back so damaged, we can't recover him.”

“My retrieval numbers say differently. We'll get him back.” Q said, he straightened his glasses and his back.

“Oh, we'll retrieve him, if he wants. But he might be too damaged. We may have turned him into a real killer. Old M thought it was a mistake to promote him to 00.” Moneypenny dropped that tidbit on him and watched for his reaction. He didn’t disappoint and she sighed. Hopeless.

“No. No he won't come back like that. He won't ever change, not really. He's still the same. We're still the same. We're all a bit damaged and we deal.” Q said, his voice soft in its posh tones, but firm in the resolve found in his words.

“Not this one.” Moneypenny shook her head, her dark curls dancing about her ears.

“Moneypenny.” Q sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I know James. 007. He’ll come back, he’ll keep coming back…”

“Because this is all he has?” Moneypenny asked, swiping her arm out, to indicate the whole of Q-branch and the ceiling that hid the rest of MI6 from their view.

“No. Yes. I don’t know.”

“Yes, well and neither does he, and that’s why he’s a mistake. I hope you’ve not ‘made’ that mistake yet.”

Q glared at her.

“Oh, oh I see. So you have.”

“Get out. He’ll be fine as he always is. We just have to be there for him. Like he’s there for the rest of the world.” Q said, he nudged Moneypenny, trying to encourage her to leave.

“You’d like him to just be there for you, not the rest of the world. You can’t own a man like that.”

“For God’s sake Moneypenny, he doesn’t belong to me and I don’t belong to him. We’re just two blokes with too much on our plates to be anything else but there for each other when we need to be...while he saves the world on a biweekly basis.” Q’s voice blasted out in a harsh whisper.

“Don’t forget Q, sometimes you save the world on a daily basis.” Moneypenny said. She rose from his desk with grace and smoothed her vibrant blue sheath dress down her figure.

“From the safety of my office.” Q grumbled.

Moneypenny laughed and walked to his office door. “I hope you're right, about him.”

“We'll keep on being friends. We can. Forever.”

“I've heard that before. Forever is a long, long time and time has a way of changing things and people.” Moneypenny said, she clicked her fingernails against the doorway, like the seconds of a clock.

\---

It wasn’t long, before Q was eating his words. James had changed. Double ohs didn’t have a long life expectancy, partially from the hazards of the job itself and partially...from the fallout of the mental aspect of the job. To many killings numbs a person.

James and the Quartermaster stood facing one another, the beautiful Walther designed solely for 007, was grasped in a rough palm and trained at Q's heart. The green light winked at Q.

“We're still friends, right?” Q asked quietly but not timidly.

Bond's hand relaxed a fraction on the gun, his trigger finger slackened just a hair. “Q, those days are over.”

“As I thought.” Q said. He pressed a button under his desk and a quick flash bang went off, blinding James, who fired on instinct, but he missed and Q was faster. Quicksilver, in his moves, he jabbed something into James as he passed to the doorway of his office. He could see Tanner, Mallory and a handful of security waiting just beyond. The Q-branch minions peeked out from behind their desks. Mallory made a come here motion with his hand. Q shook his head at him.

“You!” James grunted out, startled as his body went numb, his fingers tingled and the gun fell from his hand.

“Me, James.” Q said softly, from behind James’s weaving body, watching until he staggered under his own weight and loss of feeling, landing hard on his knees. Q knelt behind him and cradled James, keeping him safe as the drug took effect. “This is what friends do, and we’ll always be friends, forever.”


End file.
